


Glass Cabinet

by Stonestrewn



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, Major Character Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 13:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3730444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stonestrewn/pseuds/Stonestrewn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s exhausted all the time. It’s too many to handle at first, at least for a rookie - the other, older tamassrans don’t say it to his face, but he sees their concern. They offer to help, take a couple off his hands. He steadfastly refuses.</p>
<p>These kids, they’re <i>his</i>. He’s got them. He’ll raise them right.</p>
<p>
  <i>(A Tamassran!Bull AU)</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glass Cabinet

**Author's Note:**

> Putting in an additional warning for Ben-Hassrath style brainwashing. It doesn't happen to Bull, but is a pretty big part of the story. 
> 
> Originally posted on tumblr [here](http://fireferns.tumblr.com/post/113707312629/glass-cabinet).

Seven in his first batch.

  
Seven little crying, stinking bundles. Seven perfect little noses, seven pairs of tiny hands closing around his fingers when he gives them the bottle, seven first smiles meeting his in bright new wonder. Numbers ninety-eight-twenty-six to ninety-eight-twenty-twelve, and he’s their Tama.

  
He’s exhausted all the time. It’s too many to handle at first, at least for a rookie - the other, older tamassrans don’t say it to his face, but he sees their concern. They offer to help, take a couple off his hands. He steadfastly refuses.

  
These kids, they’re _his_. He’s got them. He’ll raise them right.

  
–

They start teething and he swears the bite marks on his hands will never fade. Their horns start growing and he has permanent bruises on his knees for a full year.

First steps, first words, one small miracle after the other and he knows his kids are the best, the most clever and beautiful, he sure lucked out. He has their portraits drawn and shows the butcher, the baker, the street sweepers.

He sits and watches them sleep, listens to the sound of them breathing, and his heart swells large enough to swallow the world.

–

Ninety-eight-twenty-six, he calls her Slicer.

The name is mean in the right way, laughing at a past pain. They’d been making paper garlands for the turn of the year decorations and he’d had his hand under the blade of the paper cutter when she knocked it down with her elbow and, well. Chop.

Blood everywhere, screaming. Takes him a while to realize he’s the one hurt, not any of the kids, and he’s too relieved to care about the pain. Tama-two gets him patched up, and then he’s off to find her.

She’s huddling in the shed, behind the large bags of rice. She cries silent. When he reaches out for her and she sees the blood-stained bandages where his fingers used to be, she starts to tear at her hair.

He doesn’t grab her wrists hard, like he’s seen the others do. He squeezes in beside her, contorting into the small space as best he can, garlic braids catching on his horns. He tells her he’s not angry. He tells her he’s okay, that she’s okay, too. When she crawls into his lap he hugs her as tight as he dares, kisses her face, the salt on her cheeks, and tells soothing truths and calming lies. Accidents happen. It doesn’t even hurt anymore.

They bury his fingers together out in the yard, mark the spot with a white stone.

–

Slicer calls him Bull in retaliation. Because of the horns, and because he’s just a little too big for most of the furniture. He has to move carefully, holding back is how he lives.

They talked about him joining the Antaam, his old tamassrans. You’re not supposed to hear things like that, the thought that gets into your name, but he’s always been good at overhearing. Tama, his Tama with a capital T, she thought Ben-Hassrath, but then his leg got bad and she thought otherwise.

The demand of the Qun is clear. He lives with open hands, not fists, a bull in a glass cabinet.

–

He sees a lot of himself in Slicer, can’t help it. Damn good liar, that kid, spins people right around and runs off with the change in their pockets before they can get wise. Packs a punch, too, skinny as she is. He tells her how to make it really hurt, then tells her not to do it unless it’s to protect somebody else, and from the way she looks at her own fists after, he thinks she gets it.

She asks if that’s how he lost the eye, and he tells her the story about the Tal-Vashoth attacking the place where he did training, about stepping in front of the blade. He tells her about how he made sure they could never come at anyone else again, and then some stuff about strength and responsibility, because he’s conscientious like that.

He doesn’t tell her about the way the violence fizzled in his blood, about the burning joy. He thinks she’d get that, too.

–

But Slicer’s not all bite. She cries over dead birds, the yard is a cemetery of little broken things - butterflies and skinks, mice and geckos, stone after stone in rows. She kisses the newborn babies and makes the older ones take turns on the swings and she knows her thank yous and her pleases even when there’s nothing she wants.

She grows like a young tree, lanky and big-footed. Her future’s closing in like a ship coming out of the fog, and they all talk about it, every tamassran putting their heads together over the brightest and trickiest they’ve got. He’s thinking Ben-Hassrath and the others agree. but Tama-two looks pensive and says: “Tamassran, perhaps?”

He doesn’t think she’s wrong, per se. Slicer, she’s got sharp horns but her heart’s a squishy thing. She’d do well as a tamassran, it’s just, she could do _better_. She’d fill a greater demand elsewhere.

She’s got the brains, she’s got the brawn, and she’s got mercy in her heart. Ben-Hassrath could do with more of it all.

–

The Qun demands.

He writes: _90-8-20-6. Hissrad_.

–

She comes to visit after only a week, vitaar on her face and on her arms. She’s getting used to the poison, she says, only a couple of lines for now, but it’s just the beginning. Showing off, chest all puffed up, like she’s a big deal now. He flicks her on the nose and wishes she didn’t come painted. Can’t kiss her on the cheek like this.

He makes tea and takes out the honeyed nuts. They drink in the kitchen. Slicer talks and talks and she can’t tell him anything concrete of course, but she’s happy. She’s where she should be, and she thanks him. Says he’s the best tamassran in the world.

She calls him Bull. She says, she’ll be back again next week.

–

It’s years until he sees her.

He’s at the market, haggling over the price of some eggplant, and there she is leaning against a wall a couple paces away. She’s much taller, much broader, her horns have finally come into their own, but he’d know that nose anywhere, the tilt of that chin.

His grin’s already spreading when he catches her eye, but her gaze glazes over, moves away.

Her face is covered with vitaar-white, and it’s as hard as stone.

–

More years, until he hears it.

They say one day she just snapped. Couldn’t do it anymore, whatever that means. Let a target go, went against her superior, denied the Qun.

She turned herself in after, they say. Someone raised her right, they say.

–

Five in his new batch.

Five little bundles, they fit easily in his too-large palms. Five little too-soft heads, five little too-frail cries, five tiny persons with all their dreams and sorrows yet to come, hidden in a foggy future. Numbers ninety-eight-forty-five to ninety-eight-forty-ten. They’ll call him Tama.

Ninety-eight-twenty-six plows a field somewhere to the east, and she won’t respond to any other name.

It comes out, sometimes. The first of many little demons nesting in his mind, crawling down his body to sit and stare dead-eyed at the foot of his bed in the hour of the wolf.

No wind from the sea tonight, the heat bears down hard on Seheron. Tama drags his three-fingered hand down his sweat-drenched face, salt on his cheek.

Accidents happen.

One day, it won’t hurt anymore.


End file.
